1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display device with a redundant transistor structure.
2. Description of the Related Art
A display panel for use in a display device such as a liquid display device or an organic light-emitting display device is, in general, provided with at least one transistor for displaying an image.
A transistor within each pixel in a display panel is fabricated through a number of processes. During the processes, fine foreign substances, particles, and/or impurities may undesirably be included in the transistors (in particular, in the channel regions). In such an instance, the transistor may be electrically shorted or disconnected and, thus, the transistor may not function normally. This may cause a pixel defect which changes the corresponding pixel into a bright dot or a dark dot.
Such a pixel defect which changes a pixel into a bright dot or a dark dot may considerably degrade the quality of the image of display devices and reduce the yield of display panel production.
Thus, a repair process has been conventionally performed so as to change a defective pixel that appears as a bright dot, e.g., due to fine foreign substances, rather into a dark dot such that the defective pixel cannot be visually recognized.
However, when there are an excessive number of pixels that have changed into dark dots by the conventional repair process on a display panel, the quality of the image of the display may be seriously degraded to an extent that the display panel is not of commercial value, which may result in the display panel being discarded.
Thus, there is a need for an efficient repair process for fixing defective pixels.